.NET MVP KenLin's Blog : .NET

Embrace the new .NET Logo!

kenlin — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 15:39:00 GMT

There is a new logo for .NET now, so it is change

from into

The following are the blog from the .NET Team about the new logo.

Why did we do it?

We needed a logo that was in sync with the key values that we want .NET to stand for: consistency, robustness and great user experiences. We also wanted a logo that conformed to the design principles that are driving Microsoft’s brand identity evolution and is reflected in newer brands such as Silverlight, Surface and more. Finally, we needed a logo that is more strongly aligned with the portfolio of brands that .NET is most strongly aligned with: Silverlight, Visual Studio and the AppPlat server products.

The result is a design we refer to as the “wave.” The design is strong, simple and distinctive. The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.

It's one of many things we're actively doing to renew our commitment to the future around the overall Rich Platforms we have today.

Hope all have fun at PDC2008 and you'll see glimpses of what I mean there ;)

Onwards and embrace the new .NET logo!

[Microsoft Live Labs] Volta: Web Development Using Only the Materials in the Room

kenlin — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:07:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft Live Labs is announcing the Volta technology preview, a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Also, thanks to a shared programming model across multiple-tiers, Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

Microsoft Commits to November Release Date for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5

kenlin — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:49:00 GMT

BARCELONA, Spain — Nov. 5, 2007 — Today, during the keynote address at Microsoft TechEd Developers 2007, S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., announced that Microsoft will release Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of November 2007. Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers at all levels to rapidly create connected applications that offer compelling user experiences for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, mobile devices and the Web. Soma also unveiled plans to open new opportunities for Visual Studio partners, as well as to deliver new tools and resources for developers, including a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Sync Framework and new capabilities for Popfly Explorer.

“The highly social and visual nature of the Web has fundamentally changed what users expect from all applications they interact with, regardless of whether it’s on a customer-facing Web site or Windows rich client application, or a desktop business application built using Microsoft Office,” said Somasegar. “Traditionally, organizations have been hard pressed to deliver the richer, more connected applications and services they need to boost productivity, drive revenue and stay ahead of the competition. With Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, it is easy for developers to use the skills they already have to build compelling applications that take advantage of the latest platforms.”

FWBS Ltd., Xerox Corp., Dell Inc. and K2 are just a few of the early adopter customers that are already experiencing the benefits of these releases. FWBS used Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and the Microsoft Office system to build an Office Business Application (OBA) for the law field. The application enables users to work within Microsoft Office — the tools they use every day — while also dramatically improving productivity and helping users respond quickly to changing business needs.

Xerox has also had early success developing applications with the new tools. “We’ve already seen significant advantages from using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. With the first application we built, we easily saved 50 percent of the time and money it would have taken to create the same application with other tools,” said Eugene Shustef, feature design lead, Global Technology, Xerox. “That’s more than a savings to IT — it delivers a huge time-to-market advantage because it put the tool into the hands of our analysts six months sooner than they would have had it otherwise.”

Creating New Opportunities for Partners

Microsoft also announced plans to make additional investments in the Visual Studio partner ecosystem. In response to partner feedback and in order to provide better support for interoperability with other developer tools and cross-platform scenarios, Microsoft is today announcing plans to change licensing terms, no longer limiting partners to building solutions on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft platforms only. This licensing change will be effective for the release of Visual Studio 2008 and the Visual Studio 2008 SDK.

“Integrating dynaTrace’s cross-platform application performance management and diagnostics product with Visual Studio has opened up additional commercial opportunities for our business and delivered a compelling solution for our customers. .NET and Visual Studio is a strategic platform for our business, and Microsoft’s additional investments in the partner ecosystem make it even more compelling,” said Klaus Fellner, senior director of product marketing at dynaTrace. “We’re looking forward to taking advantage of the new technology available with the launch of Visual Studio 2008 and the partner benefits available through the Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program.”

In addition, Microsoft announced plans to create a shared source licensing program for Premier-level partners in the VSIP program. The program will provide these partners with the ability to view Visual Studio IDE source code for debugging purposes, and simplify the process of integrating their products with Visual Studio 2008.

Tools for Today and Tomorrow

Microsoft also announced a number of additional resources for developers of all skill sets, enabling them to make the most out of their Microsoft tools investments to build great applications on the latest platforms:

•

The first CTP of the Microsoft Sync Framework demonstrates Microsoft’s ongoing investments in synchronization and builds on the synchronization functionality available in Visual Studio 2008. With Visual Studio 2008, developers can rapidly take advantage of offline synchronization capabilities to sync-enable applications and services easily with rich designer support. The Microsoft Sync Framework extends the support featured in Visual Studio 2008 to also include offline and peer-to-peer collaboration using any protocol for any data type, and any data store. This is part of Microsoft’s long-term commitment to providing synchronization for partners and independent software vendors that can embed the Sync Framework into their applications easily to create rich sync-enabled ecosystems that allow any type of data to follow their customers wherever they go.

•

A new release of Popfly Explorer will add new Web tools that provide Web developers and Popfly users an easy way to add Silverlight gadgets built in Popfly to their Web pages, as well as publish HTML Web pages directly to Popfly.

These latest releases are part of the broader Microsoft Application Platform, a portfolio of technology capabilities and core products that help organizations develop, deploy and manage applications and IT infrastructure. They also mark another major milestone leading up to the global launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on Feb. 27, 2008, in Los Angeles.

Product Information and Availability

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 will be available by the end of November 2007. The .NET Framework 3.5 will also be available to end users via a free, optional download from Microsoft Update. A CTP of Microsoft Sync Framework is available today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/sync. Popfly Explorer is a hosted development environment available today at http://www.popfly.com. More information about all of these releases is available at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio.

Enable ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 to your existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site or Web Application.

kenlin — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:59:00 GMT

Few days ago, I shared about how to upgrade your ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0, this time I am going to discuss about enabling ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 to your existing Web Site or Web Application.

1) You have to downlaod and install the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0. Here
2) You may download and extract the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Here

After install it, you will found out that you may create AJAX Enabled Web Application when creating new projects(Web Site or Web Application). You may also found out that there is a new tab called "AJAX Extensions" in Toolbox. If you have extracted the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, you may do the following,

1) Create new tab called "AJAX Control Toolkit";
2) Right click under the created tab and click on "Choose Items...";
3) Click "Browse..." and browse to the folder which you extract the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, and then browse to "~\SampleWebSite\Bin\" and select AjaxControlToolokit.dll
4) Now you will see a lot of controls which you are ready to use. You may browse and view the "Toolkit Live" to get the sample and idea on the controls.

You are now ready to build your AJAX web site or web application. However, if you have any existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site or Web Application, you do the normal action to write AJAX, you will found out that the AJAX is not working in your existing Web Site or Web Application. You have to do the following in order to let your existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site or Web Application to be "AJAX Enabled",

1) Open web.config from your existing web site or web application
2) Add the following XML under <configuration> tab.

<configSections>
    <sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions" type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35">
      <sectionGroup name="scripting" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35">
          <section name="scriptResourceHandler" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>
        <sectionGroup name="webServices" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35">
          <section name="jsonSerialization" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="Everywhere" />
          <section name="profileService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
          <section name="authenticationService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" />
        </sectionGroup>
      </sectionGroup>
    </sectionGroup>
</configSections>

<system.web>
    <pages>
      <controls>
        <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      </controls>
    </pages>
    
    <compilation debug="false">
      <assemblies>
        <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      </assemblies>
    </compilation>

    <httpHandlers>
      <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx"/>
      <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      <add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      <add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" validate="false"/>
    </httpHandlers>

    <httpModules>
      <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
    </httpModules>
</system.web>

<system.web.extensions>
    <scripting>
      <webServices>
      
      
      
      

      
      
      </webServices>
      
    </scripting>
</system.web.extensions>

<system.webServer>
    <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>
    <modules>
      <add name="ScriptModule" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
    </modules>
    <handlers>
      <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" />
      <add name="ScriptHandlerFactory" verb="*" path="*.asmx" preCondition="integratedMode"
           type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      <add name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" preCondition="integratedMode"
           type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
      <add name="ScriptResource" preCondition="integratedMode" verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />
    </handlers>
</system.webServer>

Now you are ready to make your web site or web application to be "AJAX Enabled".

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

kenlin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:11:00 GMT

Read from ScottGu's blog and knowing this news,

One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

Full story is here

Upgrading ASP.NET 1.x to ASP.NET 2.0

kenlin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:24:00 GMT

Last time, I speak in UserGroup gathering in 2007 Sept right after MSDN Seminar, the topic was "Experience Sharing: Upgrading ASP.NET 1.x --> 2.0 --> AJAX". Well, I also promised that i will blog about it. Actually, it is nothing new and it is nothing special. I just shared my experience on how I upgrade ASP.NET 1.1 to 2.0 and how to enable AJAX.

First, I am not sure if you know that, in .NET framework 2.0, there is 2 types of Web Projects, ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site and ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application. You may refer to the following link for more information if you would like to read more.

Introduction to Web Application Projects
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa730880(VS.80).aspx

If you are going to upgrading your existing ASP.NET 1.x project, you should choose to be using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application project. This is the message from one of ScottGu's blog, Tutorial on VB and C# are also mentioned.

"Because the VS 2005 Web Application Project model has the same conceptual semantics as the VS 2003 Web Project Model, it also makes migrating VS 2003 web projects very, very easy – with zero/minimal code changes required. To learn how to automatically upgrade a VS 2003 web project using this option, please review these VB and C# tutorials that walkthrough the VS 2003 to VS 2005 upgrade process step-by-step."

However, if you want to move your existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site to ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application, you may read the following message from ScottGu's blog,

"If you want to migrate an existing VS 2005 Web Site Project to be a VS 2005 Web Application Project, please also review these other VB and C# migration tutorials that walkthrough the Web Site to Web Application conversion process step-by-step. This article here also describes some of the differences between the VS 2005 Web Site Project Model and VS 2005 Web Application Project Model. "

Q: How can I create ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project?
A: Your machine must installed VS2005 with SP1 in order to create ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project

Q: I don't want to install VS2005 SP1 at the moment, any other way?
A: you need the deprecated “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Application Projects” installer you can find it here.

Q: Anything I need to download if I am going to start developing in ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project?
A: Available as a separate download is a custom build tool for generating a strongly-typed Profile class for the ASP.NET 2.0 Profile system. This allows you to right-click on a web.config file containing profile declarations and auto-generate the Profile type into your code-behind project assembly. You can learn more about this and download it here.

Q: I would like to read more and the full story on ScottGu blog.
A: Sure, you may go to ScottGu's blog - VS 2005 Web Application Project V1.0 Released

Q: Any other resource from Microsoft Official link?
A: Sure, here you are, MSDN: Upgrade from ASP.NET 1.x

Q: You mentioned ASP.NET 2.0 to AJAX....
A: Yes, I am going to blog about it later on. Please come back some time for more detail.

FrontPage Server Extensions for IIS7

kenlin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:07:00 GMT

If you are a .NET Developer, and you might found out that Vista( or Windows Server 2008) is not including the Frontpage Server Extensions for IIS7, this component which is important to ASP or ASp.NET web site.

A good news from IIS.NET, they are going to make a seperate installion package for you to install the FrontPage Server Extensions for IIS7. Althought it is still in Beta stage, you may try to install and test on it.

[OverView]

Microsoft and Ready to Run Software have released a beta version of the FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions (FPSE 2002) for Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" and Windows Vista.

[Features]

This version of FPSE 2002 introduces no new functionality, and is essentially the same version that was created for Windows Server 2003 that has been updated to work on Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" and Windows Vista.

[Benefits]

FPSE 2002 enables web hosters and developers to author their web content on servers or workstations that are running IIS 7.0 on Windows Server Code Name "Longhorn" and Windows Vista.

[Requirements]

The following role services and features are required to install FPSE 2002 on Windows Code Name "Longhorn"; if they are not already installed on your computer, they will be installed for you automatically when you install FPSE 2002:

1. Web Server (IIS) Role Services:

a. Web Server

1) Common HTTP Features (Static Content, Default Document, Directory Browsing, HTTP Errors)
2) Application Development (ISAPI Extensions, ISAPI Filters)
3) Security (Windows Authentication, Request Filtering)
4) Health and Diagnostics (HTTP Logging, Request Monitor)
5) Performance (Static Content Compression)

b. Management Tools (Role Services)

1) IIS 6 Management Compatibility (IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility)
2) IIS Management Console

2. Features:

a. Windows Process Activation Service

1) Process Model .

[Source from IIS.NET] More Detail Here
(Specially thanks for news reporter, Tony Cheung from Hong Kong)

Knowledge of language features, "Operator Overloading "

kenlin — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:29:00 GMT

Well, I am one of the VB insiders, we are talking about a video. This video is a chatting video between 5 guys from difference team(VB, C#, C++, Channel 9 interviewer). They are going to answer you few question about the language future from their view when developing CLR/LINQ/VB/C#/C++. But the point we VB Insider discussing is, one of them, Brian Beckman has spoken that he likes C# because of the "Operator Overloading" support. That means he does not know that VB.NET(Or shorten called VB9 now) also has operator overloading support.

Another interesting issue I found afterward, I open up .NET Documentation, type the "operator overloading" keyword in Index Tab, I found a C# article("Help me, I am overloaded") on Operator Overloading and explain to you how to do so, why to do so(ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.VSADD.v10.en/dncscol/html/csharp06212001.htm). But when I click in VB, it only shows you the "SAMPLE"(ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.VisualStudio.v80.en/dv_vbcode/html/30202e10-8bdc-47dc-8fd1-f0ff9ffa0641.htm). Oh...god...no article in VB? How the VB beginner learn and understand it then? No wonder why he said the above comment.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=273697#273697
Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman: Software Composability and the Future of Languages

Posted by Charles // Mon, Jan 22, 2007 1:09 PM

How will imperative programming languages evolve to suit the needs of developers in the age of Concurrency and Composability? What role can programming languages play in enabling true composability? What are the implications of LINQ on the furture of managed (CLS-based) and unmanaged(C++) languages? How will our imperative languages (static) become more functional (dynamic) in nature while preserving their static "experience" for developers?

Answers to these questions and much more are to be found in this interview with some of Microsoft's leading language designers and programming thought leaders: Anders Hejlsberg, Technical Fellow and Chief Architect of C#, Herb Sutter, Architect in the C++ language design group, Erik Meijer, Architect in both VB.Net and C# language design and programming language guru, and Brian Beckman, physicist and programming language architect working on VB.Net.

This is a great conversation with some of the industry's most influential programming language designers. Tune in. You may be surprised by what you learn...

Microsoft Expression Blend Free Trial

kenlin — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:27:00 GMT

Because of the Silverlight(new naming for WPF/E), you may need to create a lot of XML based graphic and its action/movement. Microsoft® Expression Blend™ is the professional design tool to create engaging web-connected experiences for Windows. So Microsoft is also announce that Free trial version of Expression Blend is ready to be download since 3rd May 2007. Please read the following,

Microsoft is pleased to present a trial version of Expression Blend. This fully functioning version will expire 60 days after installation.

Help us improve Expression Blend by reporting any technical issues. For more insight into Expression Blend, please see the Expression team blog.

For more information about the .NET Framework 3.0, see the .NET Framework 3.0 Development section of the Windows Software Development Kit. Please also refer to 3rd-party books that are good resources for learning WPF.

In order to edit code, if you do not have Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 installed, you will also need a free copy of a Visual Studio 2005 Express edition from the Visual Studio Express Web site (choose either the Visual Basic or C# edition).

Installation Instructions

Windows Vista:

Download and install Expression Blend.
Download and install Visual Studio 2005 Express (Visual Basic or C#).

Windows XP SP2:

Install .NET Framework 3.0 first before attempting to install Expression Blend.
Download and install Expression Blend.
Download and install Visual Studio 2005 Express (Visual Basic or C#).

What do the announcements at Mix mean for the Visual Basic developer?

kenlin — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:24:00 GMT

At the Mix conference today in Las Vegas, Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie were dropping goodies like tootsie pops from a piñata. There was so much packed into their over two hour keynote that I thought it would be useful to distill the announcements down into one bite-sized post that should make for a pretty quick read (but unfortunately, includes no code samples.)

- VB on Silverlight – In short, this means that you can now use Visual Basic as the code-behind for whiz-bang rich interactive applications that run on Windows or the Mac and can run in IE, Firefox, and Safari. You can download the alpha .NET-enabled release but to develop you will need the Visual Studio Extensions for Silverlight for “Orcas” Beta1.

- Unparalleled support for dynamic languages – As you may have noticed us hinting at over the past couple of years now, VB has certain aspects to it that are dynamic – late binding, explicit member indexing, runtime conversions and operators, etc. With Silverlight comes the introduction of the DLR, a shared runtime component for dynamic languages atop .NET. There are many, many, things this means for VB that will unfold over the coming months, but one of the most important ones is that it will enable simple interoperability between Visual Basic and the other dynamic languages on .NET like Ruby, Python, and JScript. - Live Services – The Live Services team has created Windows Live in a Box that will allow you to begin integrating rich photo experiences, search, contacts and more into your applications. - Productivity Frameworks – Scott and Ray didn’t talk about this in their keynote, but with Mix comes a couple of new productivity frameworks. The first is Dynamic ASP.NET controls which uses runtime database schema and coding conventions to data-bind and generate ASP.NET pages. The second is “Jasper”, a dynamic data access layer that is independent of a presentation technology which sits atop the Entity Framework. We’re looking forward to seeing the reception for these kinds of frameworks.

So, that’s the two-bite version of the announcements… Over the next couple of weeks we’ll post new entries, videos, and samples demonstrating what each of these means in detail – though for some dirty details, you’ll have to wait for the PDC.

I’ll be at VSLive next week to talk about LINQ and Integrated XML in VB Orcas. I also have my turn for the webcast series for the VB LINQ deep dive and TechEd not that shortly after I get back – so I’ve got some work to do! Enough overview, back to coding!

Source: VB Team Blog

"Live From Redmond" Webcast series

kenlin — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:08:00 GMT

VB Team is trying to get the word out about a Live From Redmond webcast series the VB team has put together aimed at Orcas and VB 9. The series will start April 18^th and will continue into June.

http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2007/04/09/live-from-redmond-webcast-series-beth-massi.aspx

Finished the Translation on WF HOL Lab04 to VB2005

kenlin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:46:00 GMT

Well, I start doing the translation again. I spent 2 days on this propose in the end of Jan. And I start pick it up again and try to finish it asap. Cause I found someone left message in wf.netfx2.com and asking me if I will do the rest. So....I hope that I would be able to finished all HOL Labs within this month. But it is a very hard job. I wake at 5:30am(because of Jet lag after back from Global MVP Summit 2007 in Seattle), I suppose should be wake up at 7:30am and go to an interview. I found nothing to do and so I still search around about Orcas, I got confuse on what Orcas acutally is. I know that it is Next VS(might be VS2007 with .NET Framework 3.5). But....I also found the Windows SDK for Vista are called Oracs_Mar07CTP in the description....hm....then....Orcas is including Windows SDK too? I then received email from the interviewer and said change the time to this Fri 8am. Cause the interview need to be fits with a Strong Tech Guy from Seattle. Yes...strong one, A guy who has 11yrs working experience, graduated from Harvard Uni.....

Anyway, I don't wanna get into sleep again, so I keep getting information from internet, and found, I have 3 things to do,

(1) Translation on WF HOL(Lab04 - Lab10);

(2) Translation on WF Starter Kit(still in beta and not released yet, so I think only WF team and I got it at this moment);

(3) Study Oracs, LINQ

(4) WF interact with WCF

Well, I found all I need the most is .....WF(cause K2 also is one of my interviewing company). And...I should start from basic first. So I found the first item I should choose is....(1). Then....should be (2). So I start my work on rest of Lab04. When I complete the Exercise 1 of Lab04, I cannot run it successfully. I search around and around, find many people saying that they have the same issues. I found many developers are trying to interact WF with ASP.NET2.0. But it is not a easy job but I think many companies(even in HK) will ask the developers to do so.

Well....until 3:30pm, I still cannot solve it. What happen to my VB one? C# is working and I just do the translation.....I take a rest and don't wanna think about it any more for a short time. I start my work again at about 10pm. I found there is a MSFT guy who answer a lot from this issue in MSDN forum, so I try to send him my source code and ask him if he can help. After I sent the email for 2-5 mins, a light comes up. I try to see my workflow project, get into every State and look at the HandleExternalEvent Activity. GOD! I made mistake on the Initial State. That is why the program cannot run it. Correct it and it works. Thanks god. And then I received that MSFT guy's email and telling me the same stupid thing I found. He is really good, within few minutes and he really do help me and found the point.

And now, it is 4:25am, all translation on Lab04 has done. Double check and the files can close. During today's translation, I found I have made mistake in my MSMVP's blog, http://msmvps.com/blogs/kenlin/archive/2007/01/31/convert-if-someevent-null-into-vb.aspx

In that blog, I mention, if C# is programming like

         if(SomeEvent != null)
         {
            SomeEvent(this, args);
         }

And VB should be

         if Not SomeEventEvent is Nothing Then
            SomeEventEvent(Me, args)
         End If

But....this is not true when apply to WF's State Machine Workflow, I have to make sure the event raise ONLY after the workflow runtime has really started. I have to change one property from the event arguments. So the code turns out like,

if Not SomeEventEvent is Nothing Then
args.WaitForIdle = true

SomeEventEvent(Me, args) 'Or "Raise Event SomeEvent(Me, args)
End If

But then you will found out that the program will fire another exception, it is saying (Event "{1}" on interface type "{0}" for instance id "{2}" cannot be delivered). Now you have to look deep into the InnerException and you will found ("Type {0} is not marked as serializable"). But you already given the serializable Attribute to the class. Why the exception is fired? It appears every parameter going into the event must be serializable, including the sender parameter! We pass this reference, which points to our payment processing service. The workflow instance doesn't actually need a reference to the testing service (if it needs to invoke a method on the service, it can use the CallExternalEvent activity), so we can fix this problem by leaving the sender parameter as null or Nothing. So finally, your code(with WF) will be like this,

if Not SomeEventEvent is Nothing Then
args.WaitForIdle = true

SomeEventEvent(Nothing, args) 'Or "Raise Event SomeEvent(Nothing, args)
End If

Convert (If (SomeEvent != null)) into VB

kenlin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 02:40:00 GMT

As I said yesterday, I translated 3 labs on official WF HOLs from C# to VB2005. Today I start the lab04, I found out that there are some code that I cannot find a way to make it work in VB. So I start searching and found the following result in http://www.codeproject.com/vb/net/backgroundworker.asp . Following what he said and the code now is working.

==========================================================================================

This was not without its quirks.

The best practice for raising events tells us that we should always test that the event is not null before raising the event. That is to say, the event must have handlers. All the articles then give a code sample something like this:

         if(SomeEvent != null)
         {
            SomeEvent(this, args);
         }

The C# implementations of BackgroundWorker both used this standard. But how do I do that in VB.NET? If you try the statement SomeEvent != Nothing, you get the error: 'Public Event SomeEvent(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs)' is an event, and cannot be called directly. Use a 'RaiseEvent' statement to raise an event. Not very useful!

It turns out that in VB.NET, to get at the delegate derived object to test if it is Nothing, you just add "Event" to the end of the event name. Don't go looking for it in intellisense though, because it won't be there! The resulting VB.NET code is:

         if Not SomeEventEvent is Nothing Then
            SomeEventEvent(Me, args)
         End If

Why have I used SomeEventEvent(Me, args) instead of RaiseEvent SomeEvent(Me, args)?

The default method of a delegate is the Invoke method, and RaiseEvent in VB.NET just calls this method on the delegate, and it makes my code less language specific. Personal preference really.

==========================================================================================

Windows Workflow Foundation(WF) Hands-On Lab01 to Lab03 in VB2005

kenlin — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:04:00 GMT

If you are interesting in Windows Workflow Foundation(WF), you should found only C# hands-On Lab. A good news to you, I tried to translated them into VB2005, and it was tested by WF Team and now, you may download them from the following link, the full story are here...

I have 2 entries on the translation of WF, one is including Lab01, while another one is including Lab01-Lab03, they are both top 5 download in http://www.netfx3.com/

===========================================================

http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/archive/2006/12/02/Windows-Workflow-Foundation-and-Visual-Basic-.NET.aspx
The Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) runtime supports all CLS compliant programming languages. The Visual Studio 2005 extensions for WF are only provided for C# and Visual Basic .NET. It's easy to find C# samples to get started. Here's some pointers to samples for getting started with Windows Workflow Foundation in Visual Basic .NET.

Hands on Labs in VB.NET - Ken Lin has kindly translated these introductory WF HOLs to VB.NET

http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/documentation/entry7167.aspx (Lab01)

http://wf.netfx3.com/files/folders/documentation/entry7553.aspx (Lab01-Lab03)
.

Webclass on VB2005(in Cantonese)

kenlin — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:34:00 GMT

I have recorded one webclass few months ago, it is about deploy VB2005 with ClickOnce. Althought this is nothing related to Vista, but I just want to share this with you, if you understand Cantonese, you may go and listen to it. Later on, I will do few more on Windows Workflow Foundation(WF), because I have writen few WF training guide, and it is now waiting approval to be post on MSDN site.

Correction of URL for Windows Workflow Foundation Resources page in netfx3.com

kenlin — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 03:58:00 GMT

I am going to be guest speaker for Microsoft HK to the ISV about Windows Workflow Foundation. The first sign come to my mind that I should go to search the information is http://www.netfx3.com/. But then I found out that the URL in the Resources Tab under Windows Workflow Foundation in http://wf.netfx3.com/content/resources.aspx is incorrect and it only redirect you to the default page of the Windows Workflow Foundation in MSDN site http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/workflow/default.aspx. After I look carefully at the redirect URL link, I would like to correct them here and I wish Windows Workflow Foundation team could update them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation by David Chappel

Incorrect: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/building/workflow/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WFIntro.asp

Correct: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WFIntro.asp
or http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/workflow/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WFIntro.asp
2) Getting Started with Windows Workflow Foundation by Dino Esposito

Incorrect: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/building/workflow/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WWFGetStart.asp

Correct: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WFGetStart.asp
or http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/workflow/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/WFGetStart.asp
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the above sample correction, you may found out 2 points and you could apply for other resource link,
1) changing from http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/building/ into http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/technologies/

2) changing WWF into WF only. In the past Microsoft is naming Windows Workflow Foundation as WWF, but somehow reason, now Microsoft only called it as WF only.

Useful Link:

Vista: Glass in C# (Original post by Daniel Moth)

kenlin — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 03:41:00 GMT

Found some good article from chatting with Some other MS MVPs in developer. I found this very good artcle which I would like to be share with you if you wanna try.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We looked at glass in Vista previously so please read that to make sure we are on the same page and using the same terminology... I'll wait...

Great, now that you are back, let's see how to get glass in our C# applications. For starters, if glass is supported and enabled on the user's PC, then your non-client area will by default get the glass effect. In other words, the titlebar and borders will have glass (nothing more for you to do). The question is how to extend that into the client area like other OS applications do (as we saw last time).

There are 3+1 things we need to do:
1. Check that it is supported before proceeding further.
2. Extend the frame into the client area.
3. Paint the extended area black.

Optionally,
4. Allow the user to drag our window by pressing in the glass area as if they were pressing on the window's caption bar.

...
...
(you may view the full story in http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2006/06/vista-glass-in-c_17.html)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Download a complete sample here.

Project Glidepath Public Beta has Launched

kenlin — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 05:47:00 GMT

Visit www.projectglidepath.net to participate in the Microsoft MicroISV Evangelism program that delivers an in-Visual-Studio experience providing the workflow-based guidance, sample code and technology to create applications for Windows Vista.

Project Glidepath delivers workflow-based guidance, code, templates and other content via a software factory, a Visual Studio add-in, consisting of tools for building a product which is a member of a product family.

Project Glidepath's product family is defined as "applications for Windows Vista including applications that use .Net Framework 3.0 technology on down-level operating systems".

Applications built with Project Glidepath focus on making their core application logic reusable so that the user experience can be delivered on many platforms (desktop, mobile, web).

Clarify on .NET 3.0(formerly WinFX) with Timeframe and Language Version

kenlin — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:24:00 GMT

I am one of VB Insiders and I got some clarify news from VB Product Group, I also feel confuse when WinFX is confirm to be .NET Framework 3.0. Many VB Insiders are also having the same feeling, finally VB Product Group tell us something and this is not able to be search from public area. After reading it, I feel better. After confirm, I know that I could beÂ able to blog about this and I cannot wait to be share with you all. Here is the content,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is indeed a confusing topic., and there really isn't much out there to clarify. Here's a tabular view of what's is coming down the pipe, and when. Highlighted items ship together.

Product/Deliverable	Timeframe	Language Ver.	CLR Ver.
.NET FX 2.0	Nov 2005	VB 8.0/C# 2.0	2.0
VS 2005	Nov 2005	VB 8.0/C# 2.0	2.0
FX 3.0 (Formerly WinFX; Includes Avalon, Indigo, Workflow)	Windows Vista RTM (2006)	VB 8.0/C# 2.0	2.0
Visual Studio "Orcas"	2007	VB 9.0/C# 3.0	2.0
FX 3.5 (LINQ)	2007	VB 9.0/C# 3.0	2.0

Here's some information on what each version includes:

FX 2.0: Includes CLR 2.0 generics, etc. Shipped with VS 2005; not much to say here.
FX 3.0 = FX 2.0 + WPF (Avalon), WCF (Indigo), WF (Workflow). In other words, FX 3.0 is a set of assemblies that has been added to FX 2.0; it only includes service pack-level fixes to existing (FX 2.0) assemblies or the existing languages (VB 8.0). FX 3.0 is installed by default on Windows Vista (and is therefore bound to the Vista RTM date), and available for download on down-level platforms. There currently is not a supported version of Visual Studio that targets FX 3.0, however; you can download extensions to VS 2005 that provides some rudimentary support for FX 3.0 at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/default.aspx.
FX 3.5 = FX 3.0 + LINQ. Basically, you can think of FX 3.5 as the new compilers, tools, and assemblies required to support LINQ. Again, FX 3.5 includes new assemblies (e.g., System.Query.dll) and service-pack-level fixes to existing assemblies. FX 3.5 will ship with VS "Orcas".

An important thing to note about the above versions of the FX is that they all run on CLR 2.0, which shipped in 2005. Unlike previous versions of VS, VS "Orcas" will include the ability to build applications that target each of the above framework versions FX 2.0, FX 3.0, and FX 3.5.You'll have the ability to specify what framework version the project should target when a project is created, opened for the first time in VS Orcas, and via the property pages. Once a framework version is selected, references, IntelliSense, Object Browser, the Toolbox, etc will be modified such that references that aren't available in the chosen target are filtered (grayed out, generally).Some common questions,

Will I be able to open my 2005 project in VS "Orcas" without upgrading it to FX 3.5? Yes. Users will have the option to upgrade the project's framework target the first time they open it in VS "Orcas"; however, upgrading will not be required
Will I be able to open my 2005 project in VS "Orcas" then re-open it in VS 2005? No. Once a project has been opened in VS "Orcas", it cannot be subsequently opened in 2005.
Will I be able to use LINQ in my FX 2.0 project? No. LINQ requires assemblies that are only available in FX 3.5 projects.
If I already have FX 2.0 installed and my app requires FX 3.0, what do I need to install when I deploy my app? Because FX 3.0 is just an add-on pack of sorts for FX 3.0, you'll only need to install the 3.0 Runtime Components, which have FX 2.0 as a pre-requisite.

Admittedly, this whole framework versioning scheme is pretty confusing, so we're trying to make the related user experience in VS opt-in: by default you'll target the latest and greatest version of the FX 3.5 when you create a project and most of this will be transparent. If you do need to target an earlier version, the option will be available. We'll certainly be interested in your feedback on the model when the first VS "Orcas" CTP is released. Fire away with any questions or rants, I'll do my best to clarify.
-
Thanks.

Aero Glass inside a WPF Window

kenlin — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:23:00 GMT

Searching from google about WPF, I found a cool blogger. His name is Adam Nathan, He is good in Win32API and .NET, from his blog, he mention that he is also going to publish a book about Win32 and WPF. He took the WPF UI he created for the Internet Hearts Migration, slapped it in a System.Windows.Window, and "glassified" it. Here is his result,

He didn't change a thing in the Hearts UI, and everything worked as expected: the 2D & 3D animations, the elements that already had partial opacity (like the card table), etc. And when doing a "Flip 3D" (which I'm surprisingly finding more useful than the standard Alt+Tab), the result is pretty cool:

Do you wanna read the full story and his code, go here : Adam Nathan's Win32 to WinFX Blog